I am sure that you are all surprised at the new look forum. The good news is that I have not (on first appearance) lost any posts and everything looks good.

Please be patient with me and the moderators, there are a lot of cool new functions and it will be a learning curve. I would ask that if you have questions that relate to how to use the forum, the FAQ button (top right) will help you out.

The forum has been updated with almost no warning as a result of serious server problems. The problem has still not been found (now over 4 weeks) and the only option I have for now is to take action and see if we get a brand spanking new version of the forum (perhaps with the old version there was a conflict between the software and the new server - who knows?)

Instead of Private Messaging, I suggest for any issues with the new forum - please use the Forum Feedback section - perhaps a lot of other members have the same issues.

Finally, I hope you enjoy it, I hope the server performance improves and thanks for all the support.

I appreciate all the hard work gone into the upgrade etc. but I have to say I don't like the new format at all. Avatars on the right?? (might get used to it) but the posts are far to busy and the separation between posts and identifying who made the post is messy now, before it was very quick and easy to read. Maybe a change in colors would help this dunno, but just my view.

PS. Saying all that the layout seems to work much better when viewing the site on the iPhone

EDIT: I think I know what it is, the posts need a thin border around them, it's to hard to determine difference between a post and line for people's signature, I think that is the biggest thing that makes it look like one big post and not clear replies etc.

sogood wrote:Speed is good so far and this "retro" forum look is reminding me of year 2000.

Oh no, the hard core retro members are going to complain - though I discovered that there is the option for each member (who is logged in) to change the look and feel.

Inside User Control Panel (look below the yellow logo) there is a tab "board preferences", 4th option from the bottom is My Board Style. Now you can have any style you like, as long as it is "prosilver".

I will see if I can work out how to make other styles available.

---

Thanks for all the comments so far. Yes - the style is something I have to get used to as well - however there is certainly the opportunity to optimise it over time.

also - post counts have been re-counted, it too me a really long time ... well not really, though I am not certain what the criteria was. The new post count may not match the post count you may have previously had - pretty certain that the top posters are still up there somewhere.

AND - also in the User Control Panel there is a cool tab called "Friends and Foes" - this is exactly what I and the other mods have been looking for. Realistically, this is a big forum with different people who have different ideas and who wont always get along - you can add foes to a list which is effectively an 'ignore' function - While friends on the other hand (in which I assume should be a larger list) also have function possibly like highlighting or better access for communicating with them.

If it makes your job easier it's good. However, it now looks a lot like my favourite ukulele site http://www.ukulelecosmos.com which is a bit confusing for me. Maybe I should start a thread on cyclists who play ukulele here and ukulele players who ride bikes over there.

AUbicycles wrote:Inside User Control Panel (look below the yellow logo) there is a tab "board preferences", 4th option from the bottom is My Board Style. Now you can have any style you like, as long as it is "prosilver".

I will see if I can work out how to make other styles available.

Dear Christopher

I do encourage you to look at the options to add in more colours. I have been involved with the Australian Geocaching forums and they use the same platform. With those forums the option to use different colours was made available. This was quite important as it is also an equity (access) issues as some users may have difficulty viewing the forums in these colours due to sight issues.

Hmm, new forum look surprised me!However, I am experiencing a painfully slow connection/experience.Click on a button, and wait, and wait, and wait. Phew! Hope its not always like this!Takes several minutes, and I'm on broadband!